It was the evening of Monday October 27th. The cold weather rolled over from Sunday so I thought it would have been a good night to sit. I drove home from college at 2pm and was home and in the stand by 3:30.

Within minutes of being in the stand trying to get set up 1 doe and 2 fawns worked their way through 35 yards away. Once I was situated it was not long when another doe came through at 20 yards. Around 4:15pm a smaller buck came through grunting and looking to push some does. 4:45pm a different shooter buck a 140's ten came through at 60 yards and never presented a shot. I tried doe bleating and grunting but the buck ignored the calls.

Around 5:15 the buck I shot came at 40 yards through the thick brush. I doe bleated one time and the buck turned his head and came right in on a line stopping at 25 yards and putting on a show by making a rub on a nice size tree. At this time falling out of the tree from shaking was about to happen, but I continually told myself to settle down and make the shot. So I doe bleated again and he came straight to the base of my tree. My shot was almost straight down below my stand. He was five yards from the base of my tree with a countering to shot. I was confident with the shot and slowly squeezed the trigger on my release.

The arrow hit the deer right above the right shoulder and went straight into the boiler room. The buck ran 30 yards stopped at this time I was saying to myself "did I hit him", "why isn't he going down", and "please go down". As I was saying this I was knocking another arrow as I was doing so he slowly walked away.

I put my bow down and glassed him as he walked away. I waited till 6:15 to get down and just take a look at the arrow. The arrow broke off with a solid 10 inches inside of him. Nervous about the hit I was going to wait till morning to look for the buck.

As I was getting my stuff together I decided to creep around a rock to take a look to see if he bedded down but I made sure to stay away from the blood trail. When I worked around the rock I saw a nice white belly on its side 60 yards from where I shot it. I glassed the buck for five minutes to make sure he was not moving then ran faster than I ever have to 154 ½ (gross score) inches of gold which was my largest buck I have shot so far in my life.

Guess coming home from college to hunt is worth it after all.

Gavin Sherburne